Open Source University ICO Review

Open Source University aims to bring together the disjointed world of education and recruitment by putting it all on the blockchain and uniting into a single ecosystem.

Open Source University is a highly ambitious project that seeks to improve the glaring issues in today’s education and recruitment systems. Now, what are these issues? The whole system of higher education is beginning to look rather obsolete, especially the idea of spending 4-5 years on a campus studying a range of pre-selected courses which might turn outdated and useless by the time the students graduate. OS University platform, in contrast, brings together prospective employers and the academic institutions, which will encourage the dialog between the two. The business owners will be able to request custom-made courses from the academia, which will make the educational process more relevant and useful. The students of OS University will be able to choose only the necessary courses with the highest ratings, and the results of their work will be securely written on the blockchain.

When proper university education becomes too expensive, some find it easier to buy a counterfeit diploma. In some cases, the fakes are virtually indistinguishable from the originals, as they are produced from the same materials and on the same printing machines. This creates a thriving black market of illicit qualification papers, which somehow should be screened out during the recruitment process. This unfortunate situation put a tremendous load on HR departments, which have to waste their time and resources on verifying the qualifications and work experience the candidates state in their CV’s. The whole concept of CV is obsolete and blockchain seems to be the perfect medium for storing and sharing your qualifications and work experience. That is why OS University is going to utilize blockchain to make the user’s credentials immutable and trustworthy.

Ok, but what about the multitude of online courses that appeared recently? And there are dozens of online recruitment services around! Unfortunately, they fail to create a united decentralized ecosystem with mutually accepted credentials. And, of course, there is no connection with the prospective employers and no tracking of your work experience. In short, they are incomplete disjointed solutions. Open Source University attempts to cater to everybody: to learners, to business owners, and to academia. The interaction between each group is mediated by smart contracts, and payments are done via EDU token.

All in all, there will be 3 kinds of smart contracts:

L2A (learners to academia) smart contracts. They will ensure instant contact between educators and learners. These contracts will securely store certificates and diplomas on the blockchain, along with the feedback on the course.

B2L (business to learners) smart contracts. The platform will feature a highly sophisticated algorithm of choosing the most suitable candidate for a position, depending on the qualifications, interests, and work experience, all of which is engraved on the blockchain. This part of the platform essentially functions as a recruitment service on steroids, where all information about prospective employees is already verified and a sophisticated AI is applied to produce only the best matches.

B2A (business to academia) smart contracts will allow the recruiters to recognize talented students very early, while they are still finishing their courses. These kinds of smart contracts will also make possible on-demand specialized courses and training requested by the companies and delivered by the academia.

The project’s team is very solid. It is led by Kevin Dowd, a Professor of Finance and Economics at Durham University Business School. Other team members also have rather impressive credentials. The alpha release is scheduled on the first half of 2018, which is quite exciting. The project scores very high on all major ICO listing sites, which indicates a real interest in the idea, which, if realized, will bring immense benefits to anybody involved in work or education.

All Open Source University investment details are available on our site.